A five-year food & wine themed strategy comprising 27 different activations and campaigns has been rolled out by the NSW government in an effort to bring more tourists to the state.
The ‘NSW Food & Wine Tourism Strategy & Action Plan 2018-2022’ was unveiled late last week by NSW Minister for Tourism & Major Events, Adam Marshall. The strategy will be executed by the state’s official tourism body, Destination NSW.
The food and wine industry collectively contributes around $9.2 billion annually to the NSW economy. Minister Marshall said the new epicurean focus will help the state continue its work to triple overnight visitor expenditure to $25 billion per year by the year 2030.
While Sydney will play a key focus in all campaigns, a major focus of the plan is to see travellers actively encouraged to branch out from city areas and into the state’s regions to sample the high standard food and beverage products available in different places.
The strategy has been formed around five pillars – traditional marketing and public relations, product, industry and event development workshops and research – all working together to find new product opportunities, create market trends and ultimately drive greater visitor numbers travelling with a primary food and wine objective.
“Ongoing collaboration between Government and industry will play a key role in achieving the objectives and I encourage the State’s food and wine operators to become familiar with this plan so we can all work together to ensure travellers continue to develop a real hunger and thirst for NSW,” Minister Marshall added.